Interaction between healthcare providers and consumers has a central role in consumer satisfaction and successful health outcomes. The healthcare consumer, facing increasing responsibility for healthcare decisions, may turn to electronic resources to supplement the information given by his healthcare provider. Here intelligent systems can assist in retrieval and summarization of relevant and trustworthy information, in tailoring the information so that it is comprehensible, and in making it accessible to computer users with disabilities. Furthermore, intelligent systems are beginning to appear that provide virtual healthcare services to the patient: e.g., monitoring the patient’s health, reminding him to take his medicine, and encouraging him to exercise or eat a healthy diet. On the health care provider’s side, artificial intelligence can provide virtual patients for training providers to diagnose, care for, or communicate with clients.

This symposium will focus on Virtual Healthcare Interaction (VHI): use of Artificial Intelligence in interaction traditionally occurring between healthcare providers and consumers. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
•    Virtual healthcare providers (e.g. medication advising, counseling)
•    Games, conversational agents, and dialogue systems for healthy behavior promotion (e.g. STD prevention, personal exercise trainer)
•    Virtual patients for training providers to diagnose, care for, or communicate with clients (e.g. virtual psychiatric patient)
•    Decision support for healthcare clients (e.g. for cancer treatment)
•    Explanation for informed consent
•    Healthcare interventions (e.g. cognitive prostheses, speech therapy, virtual or robotic companions)
•    Tailoring health information or risk communication to patients, including low-literacy, low-numeracy, or under-served audiences
•    Intelligent retrieval and summarization of healthcare information tailored for patients
•    Tailored access to medical record supporting both providers and consumers
•    Intelligent interfaces supporting access to healthcare services for people with HCI limitations (e.g. motor, vision, hearing, cognitive).

In addition to AI researchers, the symposium invites participants from healthcare-related fields with an interest in these issues. The symposium format will consist of presentations on work in-progress and mature work, demonstrations of implemented systems, invited expert presentations, and small group discussions. 

Final Schedule
Final Report
Invited talk on Specialist NLP Tools